STEPHEN'S MOVIE GUIDE

Die Another Day (2002)  

Brosnan’s three films had proven him in the public’s eye to “be” James Bond. Each movie had bigger box office than the last, with 1999’s “The World Is Not Enough” breaking box office records (in terms of money earned).. MGM wanted the cash cow to continue. EON productions, in the persons of Michael Wilson and Barbara Brocolli, who had continued in the producers chairs since Goldeneye and Cubby’s death, had a different idea.. delay the movie, to take advantage of some serendipitous timings. 2002 would be a significant year – not only was it 40 years since “Dr. No” provided Bond’s entry into big screen success, it was also 50 years since the first Bond book (Casino Royale) was published, and it was the 20th Bond movie.. it was too good an opportunity to be missed.

The decision was made – 2002 would be the release date of the movie, and work started on a script. Neil Purvis and Robert Wade continued in their role as screenwriters, and as Bond fans they were delighted at the opportunity to squeeze as many references to Bond’s past as possible. The plot was already written and preproduction commenced when 11th September made the idea of a film which includes a plane heading for a fiery demise and focused on sleeper agents, seem possibly the wrong tone. It was a period when it is fair to say all TV stations and movies struggled for the right ‘tone’. However, Bond’s place in culture proved to be as firmly embedded in pop culture as always, with references to Bond in the most surprising places – even Dick Cheney was compared to Bond in one infamous press briefing. The appetite for Bond was insatiable.. So much so that to protect the ‘brand’, EON set up a company purely to deal with merchandising and brand protection. The new Austin Powers movie came out in 2001, and the name Goldmember was a rather obvious lift from the Bond world.. the lawyers came out to pounce, but EON productions came to a peaceful resolution – as long as all the prints of Goldmember were released with a trailer for Bond 20 (as it was known) there would be no litigation.

The Bond family of contributors were mostly present – Vic Armstrong on second unit, Peter Lamont on set design, still polishing his Oscar from Titanic, David Arnold doing music, Daniel Kleinman doing the titles and Chris Corbould providing the special effects (n.b. special effects in movie parlance are actual effects which are live on set… the bangs, the devices etc… the stuff that happens post filming is visual effects). A new director was brought into the Bond fold - Lee Tamahori was chosen – the fifth director in as many movies. His was surely a safe hand.. he had directed a gritty domestic thriller in his native New Zealand about Maoris, demonstrating his aptitude with actors and character pieces.. and moved on to Hollywood with the capable thriller “Along Came A Spider”, showing he could handle the action.

Shooting took place in various South of England locations as well as Wales, with Cadiz, Spain, filling in for Cuba and Hawaii providing the waves for the opening scene. Iceland provided the setting for the movies signature set piece, the car chase on ice. It was an incredibly challenging set of circumstances for the stunt drivers, and one stunt driver didn’t quite gauge a slide right and collided with an iceberg, which proved more solid than even the Aston Martin.

The script and screen were filled with references from every other Bond movie in the EON series.. see how many you can spot. The most obvious additions were the props in Q’s lab, which were the real items from previous films, brought out of the vaults for the occasion.

Die Another Day was most notable perhaps, for its profligate use of cgi, the most yet seen in a Bond movie, and enough for Roger Moore to voice his disapproval. He said “I thought it went too far – and that’s from me, the first Bond in Space! Invisible cars and dodgy cgi footage? Please!”. This echoed many critics concerns over the turn the series had taken, likening it to the excesses of Moonraker in the Moore era. One critic described it as “a train wreck of a movie, a stupefying attempt to force feed James Bond into the mindless xXx mould”. However equally as many critics loved the movie, praising Lee Tamahori’s style and considered his approach fresh, “injecting a new zest”. Certainly the character of Jinx was enough of a success for talks of a spin off series of movies with her character to continue for some time before MGM ultimately nixed the idea. I go with Kyle Bell, who said that the first half is classic Bond, but that things start to go downhill once the ice palace is introduced.

So how is it now we are 12 years on.. are the effects in truth no worse than some of the optical effects in other Bond movies? Can it be enjoyed for the lavishly budgeted action scenes and finely honed screenplay of nostalgia for the past..? Or does embarrassingly labored innuendo and a cgi Bond surfing a tsunami kill off Brosnan’s credibility for good? Box office (432 million dollars) tells us this movie made more than any other Bond movie until that point – did it deserve to? Maybe it’s worth a re-watch to make up your own mind.

Although it ranked fifth in the box office on its opening weekend in South Korea, there was protest at the movie's depiction of Americans giving orders to the South Korean military. The film dropped out of the top ten by its second week and one theater in Seoul pulled it from the screens in response to the protests. Some smaller theaters that usually get second-run movies refused to pick it up.

Another reason why the film didn't go down well with the South Koreans was a lovemaking scene set close to a statue of Buddha.

The second signature James Bond theme, the 007 theme composed by John Barry had not been heard since Moonraker (1979) until this movie. An electronic version of the 007 Theme was re-worked by composer David Arnold and was heard during the car chase on ice sequence.

The movie's title song "Die Another Day" sung by Madonna debuted in the US Charts on 19 October 2002 and peaked at the No. #8 spot. The song was nominated both for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Original Song.

Roger Moore, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan all attended the film's premiere, seeing as it was the series' 40th anniversary.

This is the first time since 1962 (when Peter Burton played "Major Boothroyd" [Q] in Dr. No (1962)) that someone other than Desmond Llewelyn has played "Q." Llewelyn passed away in 1999 and John Cleese (who plays "Q's Assistant" in The World Is Not Enough (1999) was named as his successor. One of the extras in the fencing scene is Justin Lewellyn, son of Desmond Llewelyn.

Only the second Bond film to feature James Bond's office. It was last seen in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969).

Although the production went to Cuba to source locations, they were unable to shoot there due to US legislations so Cuba was recreated in a combination of Pinewood Studios outside London and Cadiz in Spain.

The opening titles sequence, showing Bond's torture by North Korean jailers, is the first ever sequence which is part of the story for a Bond movie and not just a separate aesthetically designed title sequence.

One of the few Bond films to openly use alternate source music - in this case, The Clash's "London Calling". The previous film to do this was A View to a Kill (1985) which utilized The Beach Boys' "California Girls".

SFX Supervisor Chris Corbould ensured that no part of the real forest in Iceland was destroyed by explosions - the trees his team used were unsold Christmas trees.

When Q explains how the Vanquish works, he is explaining technology that the US Air Force is actually developing for use in a new "daylight" stealth aircraft. However, the "invisibility" capability is only useful at extreme distance (miles), and would not in any way be as good as depicted on the car in this film.

Rosamund Pike had to leave the film set for one day to go to her English Literature graduation ceremony at Oxford University. In fact, she was only cast 5 days before the start of principal photography. Her very first acting on screen was her scene opposite Judi Dench, something she claimed to be overwhelmingly daunting.

Pierce Brosnan's knee injury which he incurred in the opening hovercraft segment prompted the production to stop shooting for 7 days. This was the first time any Bond movie has had to shut down production due to injury.

Toby Stephens, the villain in the movie, has played James Bond in three BBC Radio adaptations of Ian Fleming Bond novels: Dr. No (2008, opposite David Suchet as Dr. No), Goldfinger (2010, opposite Sir Ian McKellen as Goldfinger and Rosamund Pike as Pussy Galore) and From Russia with Love (2012).

Q mentions in his station laboratory as he hands Bond his new watch: "This is your twentieth, I believe," is one of the many nods to this being the twentieth film occurring on the fortieth anniversary.

The R1 DVD release commentary reveals that the movie was inspired by the original Ian Fleming novel "Moonraker", as the previous adaptation of Moonraker (1979) left out many elements from the book. The only element of the novel to survive to the end, after a fashion, was the duel between Bond and Graves in a club called Blades. In the original novel, Bond and villain Drax have a different sort of duel in Blades - a game of cards.

This is the first Bond film since Licence to Kill (1989) to take inspiration from a Fleming novel. The character of Miranda Frost was originally named Gala Brand. This was the name of the Bond girl in Fleming's novel "Moonraker". Other than the duel between Drax and Bond surviving into "Die Another Day" from Moonraker are: the theme of the villain having plastic surgery to conceal his real identity (in the novel, a grenade exploded in Drax's face) and the villain posing as a patriot by creating a space device claiming to help the government when it is actually a weapon.

The title is derived from a phrase from the poem "A Shropshire Lad" by A.E. Housman: "But since the man that runs away / lives to die another day". In the movie, James Bond says to Gustav Graves, "So you live to die another day," because at the start of the movie it was believed that the villain under his alternate persona had been killed.